I'm sure the traders at Virtu are meeting as we speak to update their strategies for market open tomorrow based on this new information. It's their dedication that got these guys so fucking good at what they do.

And that's the problem. Full of pride but they don't want to recognize that they have totally fucked everything up with their money printing schemes. If they had any fucking honor at all they would commit mass banker seppuku.

How come it is we didn't hear anything about the weakness of the dollar in the 70's and 80's when the yen was at some 150-200/$. Now a point move is supposed to mean something.? All we could do then was to raise rates to the moon and strip the guy in the middle of everything.

IF only Hunter were alive and penning this I'd at least feel like I was getting my full fucking LSD and adrenochrome combo w/ a vodka grapefruit chaser guzzled at 125 mph in a stolen fire-engine red caddilac convertable hallucinations worth...

...but, it sounds like Chuck Evans is writing the BOJ's shtick in Warren Buffett's bathtub while sipping a prozac xanax purple coolaid slushie out of Yellen's plastic hello-kitty bedpan...

It's the "carry trade," i.e. borrowing in one economy to lend in another. As the currency exchange rate changes, it alters the profitability of the trade. Financial companies that earn carry have more collateral to repo, so they can invest more in fuckin' bullshit like the S&P.

In Japanese culture, according to someone whose opinion I respect, the shape of power looks like a truncated pyramid, which is to say that no one person or group occupies the tippy top, but an amorphous coalition of keiretsu-like power centers occupy the approximate top. No one ruler-will sets the direction, but these power centers alternately shape and are shaped by the Japanese consensus reality.

No Westerner, who gets his conception of Japan primarily from cultural exports like ninja movies and anime, can possibly comprehend just how obtuse this system can be. Facts do not matter much and seldom enter the discussion. Plans are not implemented for their rationality or probability of success. What matters most is maintaining the consensus. The Japanese lie to themselves, they know at some level they are lying to themselves, and yet they believe it anyway.

In short, these statements from the Bank of Japan signify what the Japanese hive mind has decided to believe for the present. This is the policy, therefore it is the reality. It would take someone with a great deal of familiarity with Japan and a genius for cultural sensativity, to penetrate further into this strange beast and give further clues as to its inner workings.

On the other hand, it's hard not to think we might just be witnessing a foreign instance of something much more generically human.

Start there in Japan and expand in all directions. It's not as if any other government is basing policies on things like facts and truths.

Edit to add: While there is an ocean of cultural differences between Japan and the "West," it is difficult to see how the individual-freedom-loving Americans are acting any differently than the infamous hive-minded Japanese as regards the efficiency and sanity of their respective governments. Is being a sheep really any better than being a bee?

In short, no, I don't believe power structures in the US are essentially any different. It's just easier to watch these dynamics play out in a foreign country than your own country. Just like it's easier to spot the flaws in someone else's character than your own. It is good to correct someone else; it is a nobler thing, however, to correct oneself. It is one of the noblest things of all to chastise and correct one's own culture, but it is also one of the most difficult.

"No Westerner, who gets his conception of Japan primarily from cultural exports like ninja movies and anime, can possibly comprehend just how obtuse this system can be. Facts do not matter much and seldom enter the discussion."

WW2 vets can. Some of the Americans who faught against Japanese were completely baffled by the way Japanese faught. Even if a plan was an absolute disaster, the Japanese soldiers would continue to jump in head first, knowing they would die while accomplishing nothing.

So he’d be damned if any slopeheads were gonna put their greasy yella hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hid something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you. -yes, pulp fiction

These guys are between a rock and a hard place and have to speak from both sides of their mouths because there is no logic to their actions.

Biting time is all they can hope for and please, please, please pay no attention to the fallout from the failures of central banking in the real world.

They're riding this one trick pony until it simply keels over and the legs give way. That's the time everyone needs to be prepared for as best as can be.

Neither government nor central bank are in the business to save people from their own ignorance when the evidence of organized failure is so apparent all over the place.

Shit happens, is what they will say. "We did all we could" is going to be their excuse. Frankly, it matters little at that time what they do or say as they simply cannot do anything to save all of you.

When you're being pushed off a cliff and falling to your death, it matters no more who pushed you. You're dead and won't have anyone to blame but yourself for trusting that person to "have your back" near the cliff.

The problem is simple, there is a structural imbalance from the days when the ¥ was strong. Exporters, rather than taking the opportunity to correct this, through the pursuit of market share, are rushing headlong in search of profit. The potential benefit of a weak ¥ to the Japanese economy is thus eroded, and Abenomics is exposed for being the marketing gimmick that it is.

It is only a matter of time before the yen becomes worthless. Japan is the most indebted developed country in the world and its future prospects are dim and getting worse. If inflation begins to take root it will place upward pressure on Japanese bond yields and raise the cost of government to service its massive debt. As the yen drops even higher stock markets in Japan will fail to protect the wealth of those invested within its borders.

With the BOJ set to absorb half of the government bonds planned for sale this fiscal year, domestic investors have already started venturing overseas for higher yielding assets. If this turns in to a tsunami of money fleeing Japan it will constitute the end of the line for those holding both JGBs and the yen. More on this subject below,